Trombone careers and studio players
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2024 6:48 pm
What do you want to be when you grow up? Let's talk about being professional trombonists.
And in my continuing quest to start discussions about playing the trombone, I'll begin by calling attention to the studio players (most in NY and LA, but all over the world, actually), and suggest that it might be a good career path for the right player.
We hear people talk about becoming great classical players, and jazz players, and funk players, and dixieland players. We don't hear too much about folks wanting to have to play all those styles at a professional level and to sight read read fly paper to perfection day after day, which is exactly what studio players do.
I tell ya, if you want a trombone career playing different kinds music all the time rather than the same things over and over, and you want to play with the best musicians in the world, you might think about becoming a studio player.
Being a studio player usually requires that you be good at several different genres. Yeah, there are studio players who just do classical dates, or just do jazz dates. The current trend of Marvel Universe style orchestrations actually leans toward single genre players. But the real workhorses are those who can hold their own and sound great in any style. Often, they never see the music before they go to the gig (although it's becoming more common to get PDFs emailed ahead of time). Indeed, if you're going to be a studio player you pretty much have to bring a small bore tenor, large bore tenor, and a bass trombone to every gig, because you never know what you'll have to play. (And sometimes you can even talk them into giving you a double. $$ Yay!)
From Dick Nash, Lloyd Ulyate and George Roberts, to Alex Iles, Andy Martin and Bill Reichenbach, a small army of trombonists have spent much of their careers without an audience, in a recording studio, having to sight read any number of genres perfectly the first time through and every time thereafter, and do it all at the highest levels. These guys get recognition in the trombone world, but while all the young guys are talking about doing the audition circuit to try to get a symphony gig, or speculating on how to advance jazz on the trombone, we don't hear many folks say they want to be studio players, and purposefully developing the skills they need to make that a viable career option.
Of course, it's not easy and it's not for everyone. I wonder if we can appreciate just how hard it is getting up and driving to a studio in the morning only to have to play blazing fast chase music, followed by ominous low long tones, followed by big band swing dance music, followed by a romantic ballad, followed by intense double-tongued battle music, sometimes all on the same date, without ever seeing the music ahead of time, and without making a mistake.* And then doing it all again the next day, with completely different music and completely different demands.
*(Of course people make mistakes. But they are few, and when there are 40 musicians in a room, if everyone makes just one mistake can you imagine how much time it takes to get a good take...and studio time is expensive, and by the time they're recording music they're often behind schedule and over budget. So mistakes are...let's say discouraged.
)
It takes a certain kind of talent to be a good studio player. One of my studio heroes is Alan Kaplan. The man is a machine. Anything you put in front of him, he's going to sight read perfectly, he's going to play it perfectly, and he's going to play it exactly the same every take. He's the most reliable player I've ever heard. I remember sitting next to him and thinking, "Wow, I don't think Al has missed a single note the whole gig, and this stuff is challenging. I need to up my game." I've heard others say similar things about working with him. He's a monster in the studio. But so are several others.
Rock bands will spend months in a studio recording 20 minutes worth of music. Studio musicians will do it better, and in do it three hours.
Perhaps few trombonists even want to be studio players. After all, it's stressful, it's uncertain, it's hard to break into, there's no audience, you rarely get to play an entire piece (it's like your whole career is excerpts), you have to be really good at a lot of different things, and there are always a hundred guys standing in line wanting your gig and every one of them plays as well as you do (and that guy over there is the contractor's brother-in-law).
But if that kind of work sounds exciting (it is), and you like playing with some of the best musicians in the world (you do), you young'uns might consider focusing on that as a possible career target.
How about them apples?
Okay, comment on that or make the case for other trombone careers.
And in my continuing quest to start discussions about playing the trombone, I'll begin by calling attention to the studio players (most in NY and LA, but all over the world, actually), and suggest that it might be a good career path for the right player.
We hear people talk about becoming great classical players, and jazz players, and funk players, and dixieland players. We don't hear too much about folks wanting to have to play all those styles at a professional level and to sight read read fly paper to perfection day after day, which is exactly what studio players do.
I tell ya, if you want a trombone career playing different kinds music all the time rather than the same things over and over, and you want to play with the best musicians in the world, you might think about becoming a studio player.
Being a studio player usually requires that you be good at several different genres. Yeah, there are studio players who just do classical dates, or just do jazz dates. The current trend of Marvel Universe style orchestrations actually leans toward single genre players. But the real workhorses are those who can hold their own and sound great in any style. Often, they never see the music before they go to the gig (although it's becoming more common to get PDFs emailed ahead of time). Indeed, if you're going to be a studio player you pretty much have to bring a small bore tenor, large bore tenor, and a bass trombone to every gig, because you never know what you'll have to play. (And sometimes you can even talk them into giving you a double. $$ Yay!)
From Dick Nash, Lloyd Ulyate and George Roberts, to Alex Iles, Andy Martin and Bill Reichenbach, a small army of trombonists have spent much of their careers without an audience, in a recording studio, having to sight read any number of genres perfectly the first time through and every time thereafter, and do it all at the highest levels. These guys get recognition in the trombone world, but while all the young guys are talking about doing the audition circuit to try to get a symphony gig, or speculating on how to advance jazz on the trombone, we don't hear many folks say they want to be studio players, and purposefully developing the skills they need to make that a viable career option.
Of course, it's not easy and it's not for everyone. I wonder if we can appreciate just how hard it is getting up and driving to a studio in the morning only to have to play blazing fast chase music, followed by ominous low long tones, followed by big band swing dance music, followed by a romantic ballad, followed by intense double-tongued battle music, sometimes all on the same date, without ever seeing the music ahead of time, and without making a mistake.* And then doing it all again the next day, with completely different music and completely different demands.
*(Of course people make mistakes. But they are few, and when there are 40 musicians in a room, if everyone makes just one mistake can you imagine how much time it takes to get a good take...and studio time is expensive, and by the time they're recording music they're often behind schedule and over budget. So mistakes are...let's say discouraged.
)It takes a certain kind of talent to be a good studio player. One of my studio heroes is Alan Kaplan. The man is a machine. Anything you put in front of him, he's going to sight read perfectly, he's going to play it perfectly, and he's going to play it exactly the same every take. He's the most reliable player I've ever heard. I remember sitting next to him and thinking, "Wow, I don't think Al has missed a single note the whole gig, and this stuff is challenging. I need to up my game." I've heard others say similar things about working with him. He's a monster in the studio. But so are several others.
Rock bands will spend months in a studio recording 20 minutes worth of music. Studio musicians will do it better, and in do it three hours.
Perhaps few trombonists even want to be studio players. After all, it's stressful, it's uncertain, it's hard to break into, there's no audience, you rarely get to play an entire piece (it's like your whole career is excerpts), you have to be really good at a lot of different things, and there are always a hundred guys standing in line wanting your gig and every one of them plays as well as you do (and that guy over there is the contractor's brother-in-law).
But if that kind of work sounds exciting (it is), and you like playing with some of the best musicians in the world (you do), you young'uns might consider focusing on that as a possible career target.
How about them apples?
Okay, comment on that or make the case for other trombone careers.
It's actually hard to even remember. I think my last movie was one of the Naked Gun flicks, so that says how far back my work goes. I think my last live TV show was either the Tonight Show or the New Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and my last recorded TV show was probably either Warner Bros.' Tiny Toons or a Saban animated series like X-Men or Power Rangers, which I did a lot of. I did a couple hundred albums over the years that all kind of meld together in my two remaining brain cells, but I think my last one was some one-off Oscar Peterson thing that I can't recall the specifics of. None of this is relevant today, of course.